Seventh heaven beckons India

Sylhet, October 14

A ruthless Indian team would look to reassert its supremacy and aim to win a record-extending seventh Asia Cup title when it takes on Sri Lanka in the final here tomorrow.

The tournament showed India’s depth in the squad as the younger crop of players shouldered the responsibility of taking the team to the final, without any major contributions from captain Harmanpreet Kaur and her deputy Smriti Mandhana.

Such has been the impact that Kaur played only four games, scoring 81 runs off 72 balls she faced throughout. Even Mandhana, who led in three games, skipped one and didn’t need to contribute much. The most heartening aspect was how the three youngsters Shafali Verma (161 runs and three wickets), Jemimah Rodrigues (215 runs) and Deepti Sharma (94 runs and 13 wickets) rose to the occasion.

Despite the experimentation, the Indian team cruised to the summit clash without being challenged much, though it did lose to Pakistan in the league stage.

“This (Asia Cup) is such a platform where you can test your limitations, what type of cricket you want to play and that’s what we have done in this tournament, always testing ourselves,” Kaur said on the eve of the match

The final seems to be a complete mismatch as Sri Lanka’s Oshadi Ranasinghe is the only batter who has a 100-plus strike-rate. Among the other batters, only Harshitha Madavi (201 runs) and Nilakshi de Silva (124 runs) have accumulated 100-plus runs across the six matches. Even their star player Chamari Athapaththu has scored 96 runs at a below-par strike-rate of 85-plus.

“For the last 14 years we have been looking to play in the Asia Cup final so now we got the opportunity,” Athapaththu said.